The Tradition of Biblical Theology
In my last article for Lutheran CORE I reflected on the fact that the animating principle of the Lutheran Reformation was ad fontes—back to the sources of Christian faith. I also recounted how the formal principle of the Reformationcame to be sola Scriptura—that Scripture alone was to be the standard by which all Christian teaching and practice was to be measured.
The Lutheran take on sola Scriptura is radically different from that of Reformed (Calvinist) theology. Calvinism operates under what it calls “the regulative principle” of Scripture, which may be roughly summed up as “what is not commanded (in Scripture) is forbidden.” Using this hermeneutic (reading perspective), Scripture becomes the source of all Christian revelation.
Luther, on the other hand, seeking not to reinvent the Church but to re-form it, turned to the Scriptures with a completely different set of assumptions. Sure, the medieval Church had gotten off track and out of alignment with God’s revealed will, enshrined in the Scriptures, but the Scriptures could not logically be the source of Christian truth, for there were several decades’ worth of Christians before there was a New Testament. No, the source of Christian faith is the Apostolic proclamation “Christ is risen!” but the standard by which Christian faith and practice was to be measured were the canonical Scriptures, which were a “snapshot” of the Apostolic mind, inspired by God “so that nothing was written down that should not be.”[1]
Thus, in Lutheran usage, a Christian belief (like the word “Trinity”) or Christian practice (like making the sign of the cross) need not be found in the Scriptures to be authentically Christian; they need merely be measured by the standards presented in the Scriptures. An authentic Lutheran hermeneutic for reading Scripture is “what is not forbidden is permitted.”
At first blush this may seem to be a distinction without a difference, but its implications for Christian faith, life, and church practice are staggering, especially if we are seeking to ground our witness in the tradition of the Church catholic, as I argued that we should in my last article. The modest Lutheran approach maintains continuity with the Church across time while allowing for necessary course corrections when error seeps in or new missional needs are encountered as the Spirit leads the Church “into all truth.” (John 16:13) The Calvinist approach not only permits but nearly commands each generation to reinvent its faith and practices, searching the Scriptures to justify their choices.
The Calvinist approach is fundamentally anti-tradition. The Lutheran approach is cautiously optimistic about Christian tradition. This has serious consequences.
Here is an example from my own pastoral experience. At a recent meeting, a well-meaning layman, influenced by the incipient Calvinism of American Evangelicalism, presumed to teach theology at a Christian Education Committee meeting. I had proposed a blessing of the backpacks as a kickoff to the school year. This person declared, “Jesus didn’t bless things, He blessed people. We’re not blessing any backpacks.” Because I was not present at the meeting, his opinion carried the conversation.
He meant well. He was trying to be faithful, but his most influential theological formation had come at the hands of a quasi-charismatic parachurch ministry. His theology was so infused with the Calvinism nearly inescapable in American Evangelicalism that he put me in the position of needing to reeducate people in a Lutheran church on established Lutheran practice, found in our own worship resources, which were crafted by highly trained and experienced Biblical and liturgical theologians.
Of course, Jesus did bless—or consecrate—things if He was a faithful Jew conforming to first century Jewish practice… I confess, I wonder how the person in question missed Jesus’ blessing the bread and fish in Matthew 14 or the elements at Passover! Still, the point I am trying to make is that because he couldn’t immediately recall to mind a positive instance of Jesus’ doing something, it meant that Christians should not do that thing either—his approach to sola Scriptura was Calvinist, not Lutheran. Rather than asking, “Are Christians permitted to bless things?” (is that a valid development of Christian practice based on not merely Jesus’ actions, but Old Testament instruction) his instinct was to ask, “Are Christians commanded to bless things?”
The relevance of these two different approaches to Biblical interpretation is manifold for Christian life and faith, and I leave it to Lutheran CORE readers to work out its implications in your own mission context, but one thing I think is worth noting; it was my conviction for the last eight years I served in the ELCA that the theological distraction, dissipation, and dissidence that I saw overtaking the denomination had been built into it from the beginning by its own constitution, which stated that the canonical Scriptures were the “authority, source, and norm” for the church’s life and faith. In my estimation, the word “source” represented a Calvinist incursion into a Lutheran context, permitting the church to eventually do whatever it wanted theologically without regard for Christian tradition, for as Cyril of Alexandria wrote to John of Antioch in the wake of the Council of Chalcedon, “those who love to upset sound doctrine pervert … words to their way of thinking. … remember that the followers of every heresy extract from inspired Scripture the occasion of their error.”
[1] Here I am defining the inspiration of Scripture apophatically, in the same way the union of Christ’s human and Divine natures was defined at the Council of Chalcedon as being “without confusion, change, division, or separation.”